


The Survivor

by aidansidhe



Series: White Rose Week 2018 [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, White Rose Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 07:32:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14911058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aidansidhe/pseuds/aidansidhe
Summary: To discover a lost past, a journey must be endured. Will she succeed, or like many others, will the last survivor of Fallen Man remain lost.





	The Survivor

Legends speak of the time before recorded history. Scouts and scholars unearth strange crafted items with undecipherable text scrawled upon it. The priests selfishly hoard all discoveries, occasionally emerging with a new “true” interpretation of history. The one constant, the one truth that defied all attempts at alteration was the Reaping.

Before the Fall, a plague struck humanity. Whether it was man’s hubris or the Gods’ Divine wrath that spawned it is unknown, but what it boiled down to was simple. Unmatched souls would rot from within, killing them before they could find their match. Before they could find their savior.

One last ditch hope for the future emerged. The Tower. On the day before their eighteenth birthday, before the glyph etched on their soul was revealed and they were made vulnerable to the plague, the children were placed in stasis tubes preserving themselves and the future.

Centuries pass and the plague died out allowing mankind to emerge from the deep places of the earth, from the Sanctuaries littering the globe. Over time, the knowledge of sprawling cities of steel and glass was forgotten, and simple agricultural villages sprang up around the derelict concrete jungles of the past, reclaimed by the earth.

When the Tower was rediscovered, the Elders were both horrified and fascinated. Perfectly preserved, row upon row of young corpses lay in perfect alignment. Over the decades, scholars carefully recorded each glyph revealed and matched them with the glyphs of members of their community that had since died of disease, injury, or despair of ever finding their soulmate.

Dedicated to their work, the scholars and priests managed to catalogue all but one. The sole survivor. One sacred bridge between the distant echoes of the past and the present. From that day, every youth, upon their eighteenth birthday made their pilgrimage to the holy Tower to see if their glyphs emerge and revive the slumbering ancient.

ooOOoo

The wind grew chill as she made her way along the well-travelled path from her home to the Tower. The Holy Remnant, as it was named in her time. Clutching her furred cloak tight around her, she stalked purposefully onward. Her duty to her people was clear. Get to the tower, see the Ancient, turn around, go home, and work for the betterment of her people. In the eight hundred years since the Remnant was discovered, that has been the only outcome. The laws however were clear. If you didn’t go, you were taken. Nobody was free from the journey. The romantic part of her mind, brutally suppressed by the historically evident outcome, occasionally whispered in her mind that it could be her. She could be the Chosen One.

Shouldering her pack, she made greater haste. She was almost there. A little further and the shining tower that has been her beacon will be before her. Ignoring her hunger and thirst, she soldiered on.

ooOOoo

Taken to an antechamber, the traveler was greeted by the shrine maidens. Unmatched women who, when they did not rouse the sleeping ancient, dedicated their lives to the care and maintenance of the Tower. Periodically they would change as their matches were found in the pilgrims that ventured to the tower, but that was not to be her fate. Bathed in sacred oils and dressed in a simple linen shift, she strode purposefully into the holy chamber. Feeling a vague stirring in her chest, she approached the gleaming tube and placed her hand gently on the artifact. With a sigh, her head fell in disappointment. Nothing. Turning to leave, she spotted a faint light reflected in the glass. Her soul glyph had emerged. Looking up in sudden hope, Weiss gasped as a pair of silver eyes opened.


End file.
